• Home
  • Articles
    • Books
    • Business News
    • Community
    • Economics
    • Environment
    • Food
    • Human Rights
    • Observations
    • Politics
  • About
  • Subscribe
  • Contact
The Mirror is a bi-monthly magazine which looks at the social, spiritual, political and environmental issues in our world
Reflections and Observations
  • Home
  • Analysis
  • Books
  • Business News
  • Change the Conversation
  • Climate Change
  • Comment
  • Community
  • Economics
  • Energy
  • Environment
  • Food
  • Health
  • Human Rights
  • Observations
  • Politics
  • Social Networking
  • Spirit
  • The Daily News
  • Uncategorized

Crossroads (A Key to All Mythologies)

– by Johnathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen’s gift for welding depth and vividness of character with breadth of social vision has never been more dazzlingly evident than in Crossroads.

It’s December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless—unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it.

Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clem’s sister, Becky, long the social queen of her high-school class, has sharply veered into the counterculture, while their brilliant younger brother Perry, who’s been selling drugs to seventh graders, has resolved to be a better person.

Each of the Hildebrandts seeks a freedom that each of the others threatens to complicate.

Jonathan Franzen’s novels are celebrated for their unforgettably vivid characters and for their keen-eyed take on contemporary America. Now, in Crossroads, Franzen ventures back into the past and explores the history of two generations. With characteristic humor and complexity, and with even greater warmth, he conjures a world that resonates powerfully with our own.

A tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, its action largely unfolding on a single winter day, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a pivotal moment of moral crisis. Jonathan Franzen’s gift for melding the small picture and the big picture has never been more dazzlingly evident. 

Share this:

Related Posts

Palo Alto 2 TM

Analysis /

Palo Alto and the way we live now

The crisis of TM

Books /

The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism

Keeping an eye...TM

The Daily News /

Nuclear powered submarines to keep an eye on the “wolf warrior”

‹ What makes a good literary hoax? A political point, for starters› Are you up to date?
15th March 2023

Recent Posts

  • Palo Alto and the way we live now
  • The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism
  • Trump’s unprecedented call for protests is the latest sign of his aim to degrade America’s institutions
  • Nuclear powered submarines to keep an eye on the “wolf warrior”
  • Getting to Diversity

Categories

  • Analysis
  • Books
  • Business News
  • Change the Conversation
  • Climate Change
  • Comment
  • Community
  • Economics
  • Energy
  • Environment
  • Food
  • Health
  • Human Rights
  • Observations
  • Politics
  • Social Networking
  • Spirit
  • The Daily News
  • Uncategorized

Archives

JEZ Media

Back to Top

  • Home
  • Analysis
  • Books
  • Business News
  • Change the Conversation
  • Climate Change
  • Comment
  • Community
  • Economics
  • Energy
  • Environment
  • Food
  • Health
  • Human Rights
  • Observations
  • Politics
  • Social Networking
  • Spirit
  • The Daily News
  • Uncategorized

To subscribe, advertise or contribute articles to themirrorinspires.com contact publisher@xtra.co.nz

(c) The Mirror Inspires, 2023